"Gaming Divorce"

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

booting players

I've booted players from my game:
- one was a style clash
- one didn't bathe

No regrets. In fact, I find that the sooner you realize that someone doesn't fit, and the sooner you boot them, the easier the process is. The important thing is: (1) to explain it isn't personal, and (2) to make a clean break.

 

[Kanegrundar]

It's a lot harder, IMO, to give another player the boot than to walk away from a game myself. Luckily, I've only been involved in one player boot in all my years of gaming. He was a nice guy and a great player, but he didn't bathe all that much. It got so bad the last session that he was a part of that one guy sitting beside him got nauseous so bad that he left the game that night in the middle of the session. When we confronted the unwashed player, he got really insulted and refused to talk to any of us. The worst part was when he was bad-mouthing the group to anyone checking out our ad in the LGS for new players. All in all, it was a sad deal, but it had to be done.

As for my leaving games, it's always been an issue of time. I bow out of offers all the time since I simply don't have the time to drive sometimes an hour away just to game once or twice a week. Maybe once I get moved to Independence and get settled, I'll have more time to game...

Kane

 

[Uzumaki]

I've never dropped a player, but it would be way harder. I bailed on my old group... almost 4 years ago. The only regret I've had was that they're the only I know and am in contact with that play D&D.

 

[Ogre Mage]

Gaming divorce

I am on the verge of dropping out of a group I have played in for 3 years and the group includes some friends.

People tend to be fairly noncommittal about showing up. When I was living in the same city, that wasn't too big of a deal. But now I am an 80 minute drive away (I had to move because of work) and I have lost all patience with them. I feel sad about quitting, but it just isn't working for me anymore.

 

[takyris]

From both a gaming group and a writing group perspective, booting a player is harder than booting yourself. I've never booted a player, although I did allow and offer input on a number of back-office discussions that eventually led to the guy deciding to leave, after discussing the matter with his friend (another player). He wasn't exactly booted, but he was certainly finessed out of the group.

I have another player I'd like to boot, but I can't, really. Not a pity plea -- that's just the way it goes. He's a friend of a friend, and those friends are many of the folks in the group -- even as they admit that he doesn't add much to the game and often takes much away from the game. If that finessing thing could work again, that'd be awesome, but I don't see it happening. And he's not impossible to work with -- I just have to remember not to include him in my calculations when coming up with encounter difficulty levels, since he's just going to do stupid irrelevant useless stuff anyway.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Just to make it unanimous - booting a player is harder than quitting. If you have to do it then the earlier you do it the better. Have a 'probationary period' for new players. The fastest I ever dumped a player was when he showed up to two games in a row drunk and abusive towards other players. He still tried to come back the next week, again drunk, but he was escorted firmly out by three rather large players.

The Auld Grump

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

Booting a player is going to have to be hard for the reasons Teflon said. Never actually had to do it.

However I have dropped a player from a gaming group. There were 4 of us, and we weren't playing anything consistently. Had a few one-offs going with Vampire, Mage and Werewolf (this was pre 3E and we were all a bit bored of D&D at the time). GMing was being fairly evenly split between me and one other guy, but he and I hadn't both played together in YEARS, so we asked the other 2 to take a couple of shifts. One did fine, but the other guy decides to run a game where despite being given the opportunity to get the characters together in a group he ACTIVELY walks away from it. Basically the NPC hireing us was keeping each of us in the dark about what all the others were doing so the entire night 2 of us were sitting around watching the GM have a series of inter related one-offs. Plus he threw in some deus-ex-NPCs that actually did everything important instead of tailoring the challenge to the PCs we made. It felt like we were watching him GM his party of PCs and we were just the bit parts that contributed an action or two.

This was the final straw - we'd been putting in a lot of work over the years and felt he was making no effort to let the rest of us enjoy the experience.

So we decided to just not phone him and see how long it would take him to pick up the phone and contact us. We kept on gaming, and found some other people to join us, which was cool. Had he called we'd have invited him to come to a game.

8 years later none of us have heard anything - Firkin Good Riddance

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Never have I regretted booting someone from a game or booting myself. I may have regretted some of the fallout that later occured and I definitely regretted not booting someone sooner.

Really, it is a hard thing to do - especially boot someone out. I think - and I am going out on a limb here -one of the reasons it is so difficult is that the individual getting the boot probably has some maturity issues anyway (else they would not be booted). If not maturity, then at the very least they are a difficult person. Therefore, when it comes time to pull the plug on them it can get pretty uncomfortable. Especially if the person is a friend or someone more than someone you see at the gaming store.

 

[kolvar]

booting, for sure.
Had to do it once and the whole group suffered from this player. He was invited for a short part of the adventure and did his stuff well. He is a person who is rather hard to get by with (heck, I hated him for years and only recently got by better with him. He is the kind of guy, who constantly hides his feelings behind a facade of (not realy) coolness, allways saying something against the consensus to say something). But he wanted to play and I knew, that he could play, well. The only other person in the group, who knew him, thinks similarly about him, but does not have the problems with him I do have.
Well, after three sessions we did some board-adventuring (the group meets only once ever 3 to 6 month) and he behaved like a jerk (everone, who followed the thread just said I should have cut the discussion with him short and dropped him instandly).
When we met again, I heard from another player, that he would leave the group, if this one person would play on and the mood was rather bad. We all got angry about the "bad"-player (even the other person mentioned above) and it was finally decided to drop him giving him the reason, that the other player would leave if he played on, being dishonest about it (sad, but the player, who knew him beforehand plays in another group with this gamer and wanted not to breake the friendship).
The entire situation s....d badly.

So, who of us has been dropped? (I have, and I realy can understand it, because I was realy annoying at that age (even more than now))

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I don't really consider that I dropped out of a group, but had to leave because I was moving. I lived a year in St. Louis, Missouri, and corresponded with a gamer via email for several months before I and my family moved there. He'd not played in some years, and we put together a pretty good group of players. I was having a blast in the games, both running and DM'ing, but then circumstances changed and we had to move back to Arkansas. His group ran on a couple more years, with some folks coming and going.

I've not been back there in 3 years, but we still keep in touch and constantly bounce gaming ideas off each other.